The Allied Media Conference Proposal

Okay, so I’ve checked out the page for submitting Proposals to the Allied Media Conference, and found out this is great because they’re about as open-ended as we are. We can do just about anything for the conference – or not present anything and just set up a caucus for folks interested in Michigan Free Schools to meet up.

Background Info

I’ll give a run down of what we have to do for this one, but if you want the full page of information:
this will take you to the proposal page
and this one is a list of old conference programs to get a better idea of what they’ve done at the AMC in the past.

What we need is very straightforward. So first, let me ask – what are we doing?

There are four kinds of sessions:

* Workshops: These run the gamut in terms of topics. We love “how-to” workshops, from both an introductory to an advanced level. We encourage presenters to think creatively about how to make content as accessible as possible (for example, how to video-blog if you don’t have a mac, or if the library is your primary source for internet access).
* Panel Discussions: Moderators of panels need to draw out essential ideas and questions from panelists and then bring the room of AMC participants into the discussion.
* Film Presentations: We give preference to sessions that explain how a video is being used for social and political transformation.
* Caucuses and Meet-Ups: The AMC is an opportunity for people with a common interest to come together and strategize. Explain what you want to base your caucus around and we’ll do our best to support it.

I figure we wouldn’t be much of a Film Presentation – the other three definitely work though. I was thinking a Panel Discussion or Caucus, honestly, but it’s up to everyone.

They’re also looking for presentations that would cover one/some of these topics:

Session topics: Arts & Culture, Print, Radio, Video, Photo, Web, Media Policy, Economics and Sustainability, Strategy & Infrastructure

But the big thing to do would be to check our the AMC Vision statement. I’ve attached that to this discussion, so you can check it out any time.

Proposal Info

Alright, I’ve talked enough – what we need aside from a Name, Email, and Organization is
*Session Title
*Proposed Session Description
*Presenter Names and Bios (I’m thinking just a short paragraph “Hi, my name is Roberto, and I’m pedantic” type thing).
*What type of session it is (from the list above)
*Our involvement in the session (Presenting the session or Organizing the Session. I’m a fan of presenting, but that could also be academia’s fault.)
*Any help the presenters would need in attending the AMC (help covering travel, room and board, or complimentary registration). I’m okay with just giving folks rides to the AMC, and registration ranges from Free to $20 as the most common, so I don’t know what folks are feeling with this question).

The Presentation

So the first thing we need to do is really honestly figure out what we want to talk about. When I first pitched this to Angelo, I was thinking something more along the lines of a “how-to” for other folks. By the time we’d be presenting, the MPFS should be in full swing – so the idea is to talk about how the MPFS started, how people got organized, and what worked for us in organizing it.

The focus would be to help other folks figure out ways to put together their own Free Schools. It’d be a constant work in progress for us, so we’d be in the best position to talk about how many screwups we’ve had along the way and what we did to fix them – seeing how it’s likely that we’ll be talking about stuff that’s happened from a week before the presentation, as opposed to other folks who’d be talking about stuff from long in the past.

Given the possibilities, though, we have a lot of options. So I’m fine with leaving it open to debate and just writing out something based on what everyone else is interested in.

The absolute deadline is 5pm tomorrow – so right after I get out of work. That said, I’d really like to be able to get the most work done of this presentation tonight, with 7pm-11pm being my best working hours. Obviously if other folks don’t have that time open, I’ll work around it.

Okay. Done. Gimmie feedback. – R.

I’m totally down for helping out with this. I like the idea of doing a “how-to” workshop for free school start-ups. I am free anytime tomorrow (4/10/2009) to help draft a proposal. Unfortunately, I work until late this evening. Let me know if there is anything I can do to assist you!

I am so fucking excited about this, and am for the “how-to” as well. I can be free to assist at about 7:30 for at least a couple hours tonight, and sometime tomorrow afternoon onward. Are you in MP or Lansing today?

I’m in Lansing today, but I can move if that works out for most people who want to work on this. Otherwise, we can talk over AIM about it.

Alright, so we want to do a “how-to.” Aside from writing out the proposal, the thing we should really start doing now is recording all of the stuff we’ve done/will do as an organization – at least in terms of looking at infrastructure stuff. Our minute taker is going to have to be damned badass. It’ll be a pain in the ass, but it’ll make the presentation much easier when we put it together.

I’m thinking for the abstract, we should take bits of Angelo’s proposal to say what our goal is – followed by the goal of the presentation.

So here’s what I’m thinking (so now you know I’m a tech writer).

The Abstract

1. We do this
2. More people should
3. Here’s how you can

The Presentation

1. Why we’re a Free School/what we plan on doing
2. How we got folks together
3. Some problems we face/how we fixed them
4. Session Activity
5. Question/Comments – (Thanks)

At least for an outline, what do you think?

I think it’s a really good outline—my only suggestion would be tacking on a last item to the presentation outline, like “Closing Questions/Comments” just to wrap the whole thing up and to allow people time to ask any last questions, etc. Also, how lengthy were we looking to make this? Is a brief paragraph per item sufficient, or should it be more/less?

For the abstract, we shouldn’t take up much space. Maybe one big paragraph to cover the whole thing, or two short ones. This is probably what the AMC organizers are going to use in their program, so the shorter the better.

For the presentation, you’re definitely right about the Questions/Comments part. We’ll need to have that included. I’m not sure what the time limits are on the sessions – so we could have anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour and a half. But we can worry about that later.

I cannot go to the conference, I will be out of town, but whatever I can do to help, lemme know!